Why Christmas = KFC in Japan

The Turkey does not breed naturally in Japan and is rarely cultivated. Apparently the taste is not of such a popularity to warrant large amounts of it to be imported into Japan either. Thus, many Japanese have not tried turkey.

Another reason why turkey didn't catch on as a popular dish during Christmas is the fact that most Japanese folks don't have ovens - or an oven big enough to roast an entire turkey.

One day at KFC's Aoyama branch, a foreigner went to buy some chicken at KFC and said "I'm having a party but because there is no turkey, I've come to get some fried chicken instead."

In 1974, KFC then started promoting the catchphrase "Christmas = Kentucky" and poured a load of yen into the marketing effort. The catchphrase soon caught on and together with the commercials on TV, the Japanese then started to consume a load of Chicken during the festive season.

-- Sorry, I just been handed a bulletin by my staff that confirms that those stories are all apparently true.

Allow me to revise and extend my previous remarks. This just in: Robert Conquest's Third of Law of Politics, which posits that "The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies," is alive and well.